Farounbi: Nigeria’s Problem Is Not Lack of Capacity, But Failure to Harness It (Video)

AMB. (DR.) YEMI FAROUNBI believes Nigeria possesses the population, youthful energy, natural resources, and creative capacity required to transform the country into a major global power. In this first part of his interview with GBENRO ADESINA, the veteran journalist and diplomat explains why he remains hopeful about Nigeria despite its difficulties. He traces some of the country’s development problems to the way its resources and political structures have been managed, while challenging the nation’s leaders to create opportunities for its young people. Farounbi also weighs in on restrictions on preaching and trading in commercial vehicles and examines the place of religion and culture in Nigeria’s development. The Excerpt:

Q: You said you have hope in Nigeria. The younger generation doesn’t. What gives you hope in Nigeria?

A: I have an unshakable hope in Nigeria. There are many reasons for it. Let us look at the size of the country. Nigeria covers about one million square kilometres and has a population of about 235 million people. That is more than 20 per cent of the entire population of Africa and more than 17 per cent of the world’s Black population. What makes this population unique is its youth. About 60 per cent of the population is young. It is not a dying population like those of a few countries that I know. Our young people are very articulate, educated, exposed, restless, and sometimes impatient. Let us also look at our natural resources. We have crude oil, ranking about 7th or 8th in the world; natural gas, ranking about 10th; and bitumen, ranking second in the world. We also have other minerals, including gemstones, lithium, gold, columbite, tin, and coal. There are about 33 minerals we have not explored. This represents a future that can create opportunities for both the young and the old. Look at our climate. It is suitable for virtually all products to grow. Whether we like it or not, there will be a synergy among all these advantages, particularly our human capacity. If you go to any country in the world and you don’t see a Nigerian, don’t stay. Nigerians are doing well all over the world. They are doing well in music, sports, film production, among others. There was a time, a few years ago, when the entire traffic system in New York was being managed by a Nigerian. So, we have the ability and the capacity. All we need is faith in ourselves and our country. Nigerians dominate universities across West Africa, both in numbers and in academic performance. Why are the South Africans hostile to Nigerians? They are hostile to us because we are succeeding. We have things they don’t have. If a black man is driving a beautiful big car in South Africa, there is a 90 per cent chance that he is a Nigerian. If you see a beautiful house occupied by a black person, chances are that he is a Nigerian. Go to the United States. Look at the immigrants. The most educated immigrants are Nigerians. Therefore, we attract enemies. When we go to Ghana, we turn things they don’t believe in into gold. Naturally, they will become envious. All we need in Nigeria is a leader who will make the youth believe in themselves. When the founder of Facebook visited Africa, he came to Nigeria because we are not only consumers; we are fantastic, creative, and innovative consumers. Go to any social media platform; Nigerians excel. I have seen Nigerians doing the impossible. I remember when we switched from driving on the left to driving on the right; our Nigerian mechanics, as uneducated as many of them were, modified cars to adapt to the change. They could adapt the engine of one brand of car to another. We are resourceful. We have no reason not to believe that better days will come. The youth are the ones who will create those better days.

Q: A poet from the Niger Delta once wrote about the idea that the natural resources you mentioned, particularly oil, have become a curse rather than a blessing. Despite our abundance of resources, we remain poor because, as the argument goes, we have failed to manage them properly. How would you respond to that criticism, including the claim that your generation has not been fair to mine?

A: There is no country in the world that has not experienced periods of difficulty at one time or another. As powerful as the United States is today, it did not begin that way. The country fought a civil war and struggled with the suppression of the people who were already living on the land it occupied. Over time, however, its diverse, multiracial, and multinational population contributed to its development and progress. The United States was once under British rule; today, it has surpassed Britain in many respects. There is no country without its storms. In our own case, we were created not by ourselves but by the British, who forced us together. But over time, we have been together. The British left a death trap that has made it difficult for us to live harmoniously, so that we would always need them. Today, we have begun to grow. Today, we have the largest oil refinery in the world. We didn’t start like that. But this does not translate into having fuel in our cars. There was a time when our economy grew at 11 per cent; today, it grows at about 2.3 per cent. This is because we haven’t started to manage our resources properly. The management of our resources depends on our political structure. Because of the circumstances of our political history since independence, particularly the incursion of the military, which lasted for 28 years, we found that the structure we all negotiated when we became independent, which allowed leaders like Awolowo, Azikiwe, Okpara, Tafawa Balewa and the Sardauna to make progress, was destroyed by the military. The military imposed a centralised structure. Imagine we didn’t have military intervention. If you had cocoa and sold it, you would keep 50 per cent of the money. The same applied to groundnuts, tin and coal. Imagine if we had crude oil at that time. The owner could have kept 50 per cent. The cheap money from the oil has made Nigerians lazy. This is why some Nigerians are advocating for the rearrangement of Nigeria so that we can take advantage of the potential we have. Who knew that we had lithium deposits in Nasarawa? We do know that in Oyo National Park, there is lithium. As you go to Oke-Ogun, we have gemstones there. What do these foreign interests do? They recruit some bandits who drive the people away from their land. The foreign interests give money to the bandits. The next week, the caterpillars move in to mine the lithium. They still pay those bandits for protection. They remove the lithium as if they are removing laterite, but they are actually removing gemstones and lithium, taking them to the ports and exporting them. Nigeria is not benefiting. We see it in Zamfara, where banditry has become widespread because these foreigners turn these bandits into agents who, unfortunately, cannot see that they are hurting their own country. When you allow these foreigners to remove our gold across the borders, they don’t pay excise duties; they don’t pay any fees at all. We are not benefiting. If Zamfara people knew that the proceeds made from gold would come back to the state, they would protect the gold. If the people of Bayelsa and other oil-producing areas knew that 50 per cent of what was generated from their resources would come back to them, they would not destroy the oil pipelines. In Ilesa, on the roadside, you will see tents and huts where people are illegally mining our gold. Around 6 p.m., you will find vehicles marked “Mali” and “Burkina Faso” taking away our gold. If Osun State knows that whatever gold it sells will generate money that will remain in the state for its development, people will protect their resources and resist external bandits. So, our structure is a function of our history. This structure has created a problem for us. Talking about our generation not being fair to yours, maybe it was a privilege that I became a chief executive at 33. It wasn’t bestowed on me at NTV, Ibadan. I took over from WNTV. I worked for it. An average Yoruba man was taught, “Ise loogun ise.” For many years, we have abandoned that. We wanted to enjoy free money from oil. We didn’t want to work anymore. But we are back. That is why you are here. We have begun to recognise the essence of multiple incomes. We have understood that nobody can do for us what we don’t do for ourselves. We are beginning to realise that Nigeria is not inferior to any other country. Today, we dominate music worldwide. Our musicians didn’t go to music schools. They are exploring their own creativity. There is no country that can outrun Nigeria in the fashion industry.  Before the white man came, we were not naked. We had our own textile industry to make kijipa, aso-oke, alari, etu, ofi, sanyan, and adire. Before the white man came, we were making hoes, cutlasses, and guns. Who taught us the technology? We taught ourselves. We created our own mini-iron and steel industry. The blacksmiths were technicians and technologists. When the white man came, they took our minds away from our culture, civilisation, and our technology.  Now we are rediscovering ourselves. Today, adire is worldwide. The Chinese are trying to copy it, but they can’t copy it successfully. They tried aso-ofi, but it didn’t work. So, what we need from your generation is shared dedication. You are luckier than us. You are more educated. For many years, we had only University College, Ibadan. Later, we added three. Today we have about 500 such institutions. We know it is not enough. We are improving our educational system every day. Your generation is not waiting for the government; you are doing all of these by yourself. The entrepreneurial spirit indigenous to us is beginning to spring up. So, we don’t owe you anything. We have not offended you. You have not offended us because you have begun to use your superior educational exposure and expertise to turn things around. In my time, we relied on Encyclopaedia Britannica. Today, you rely on AI. I met a Yoruba man recently who has fashioned AI for the use of Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa languages. The last time we did something like that was when Ajayi Crowther, who wrote Yoruba text, including the Bible, went to the East to turn the Igbo language into a written form. That is what you people are doing. But you are not giving credit to yourselves. You know why? We all think that all that matters in this world is money. That is the difference between our generation and yours. In our time, it wasn’t money; it was a good name and ethical values. Now it is money. You will soon discover that what you need is not money. You will soon discover that, in another one or two years, by the time you look at your followership as PrimeStar TV Nigeria and begin to look at the unmeasurable changes you are impacting on people, the mental reorientation you are giving people, and the ethical renaissance that you are creating, you will see it and be happy with yourself. If you don’t have billions, you will feel more satisfied than the person who has billions because, at the end of the day, the person who has billions knows that he is a current champion. He is not a permanent champion. In Nigeria, we used to talk about Da Rocha, who was very rich. They would say, “O lowo bi Da Rocha.” Who remembers Da Rocha again? At a time, in the big city of Ibadan, we talked about Adebisi Idi-Ikan. At a time, it was MKO Abiola who once said, “Bi agbana ba wo inu owo ohun, a je eyi to ma je, a kuro. Agbana wo owo Abiola, o je run.” When it comes to money, there is no family champion. When it comes to skills, artistry, expertise, creativity, and innovation, it takes time to excel. Someone like me doesn’t have money, but I have built many people. The people I have mentored have become great. They are better than me. I get excited by that. I see the concepts we introduced that have grown. People have taken them beyond the little mustard seed that we planted and turned them into giant trees. When I look at it, I feel happy. The happiness that I have is what no rich man can have. Very soon, this generation that you think you are not doing anything, when you sit down, you will know that it has many achievements that my generation could not have. Fela tried to win American awards. Davido, Wizkid, and Portable are just casually winning them today. I remember when KSA was nominated for the first and second time; those nominations were celebrations. Today, nobody celebrates nominations because the awards are there to be seen. You are not appreciating that. I remember the day we were thrashed 7-0 in football by Ghana. They are called the Black Stars, and we called ourselves the Red Devils. But as time went on, Jay-Jay Okocha remained an enigma all over the world. You still watch him and cannot imagine the wizardry and creativity that came from the legs of Nigerians: Kanu, Osimhen, etc. You are not celebrating that.

Q: What are your thoughts on the National Assembly enacting laws to ban preaching and selling in commercial vehicles?

A: There are some things those elected into office do in Nigeria that do not reflect deep thinking or deep commitment to the ordinary people. People who sell in vehicles depend on that as their only market. It is a mobile market; they go from vehicle to vehicle. This is because our economy is still largely informal. These people don’t have enough money to rent shops. So, you kill them when you kill that opportunity for them to sell in the vehicles. You may argue that what they are doing is not done anywhere. But there are things that are peculiar to our culture. For example, there is no place in the world where people spray money the way we do. It is peculiar to our culture. When we were using cowries, people sprayed cowries when dancing. During the colonial era, when we were using coins, we sprayed. While it is part of our culture, it is foreign to white people. Why are they saying we shouldn’t do it? God created the world as an ecosystem. There is weather or climate, types of vegetation, types of soil, and types of people. They ensure that these things are integrated. The weather will determine whether we are black or white. That weather will determine the food we get. It determines the type of houses we build and the dresses we wear. You now say, “No, we should be like white people and wear coats.” Or you say, “Don’t eat yam and plantain. Eat Chinese food or food that comes from America.” You are already destroying the natural ecosystem.  When you go to church in the UK, everything is silent and solemn. The English people are inward thinkers. Americans are boisterous and loud. They don’t worship the same way in their respective churches. Nigerians are boisterous, almost like Americans. Nigeria has its problems. America doesn’t have electricity or water problems. An American who doesn’t have a job will be entitled to social security. Insurance and other things take care of their health issues. What you are thinking about here is not what they think about. There is no American today who is worried about JAMB.  In Nigeria, some people come to church without eating. They don’t know what they will eat when they leave the church. They have children who will go to school the next day, and there is no money. You know that if you allow them to pray silently, their minds tend to drift away. You will ask them to pray aloud. If you situate that in the Bible, which says you should go into the innermost part of your room, that is okay for a Middle Eastern culture, but not necessarily for an African culture, where some people walk to church, and some don’t even know how they will get back home from church. So, their minds can drift away. There are some things that have to be adjusted to our culture. If you find a man preaching in a commercial vehicle, it is our way of doing things. In Isreal made up of the Jewish people and Saudi Arabia, mainly Arabic or Islamic nation are in the Middle East. In both countries, there are fresh bananas and apples. They have developed irrigation to a sophisticated level. Both countries are deserts. They realised they had to adapt. Before, they said women must not drive; now women are driving. They will not say, “Don’t read books in Saudi Arabia,” because they know they need books for the processing of their crude oil and the development of their economy. So, they adjust to their own circumstances. You go to Jerusalem in Israel, and you go to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, and you see them dressing alike and wearing the same thing. Then you start wondering, “Are they having Alhajis also in Israel?” Then you realise it is their culture. That is what they wear. They wear white because it reduces the impact of heat on their bodies. When these Muslims sit on the streets on Friday, you don’t find it like that in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the UAE. If you see the level of development in Qatar and the UAE, particularly Dubai and Abu Dhabi, you start wondering, “Are they Muslims?” They are. They are strict about their religion. Yet they know they have to do science, technology and engineering so as to develop their countries. In Dubai, there is an ICT hub. So, what we need in Nigeria is not that kind of religion they are talking about, but laws that will make us use our environment, adapt to it, and uplift our environment so that we can be uplifted. I think about the sorry situation of Nigeria every time I have to pass through Dubai or Doha in Qatar, or I visit Bahrain or other Muslim countries and see the level of development. Many times, I ask myself, “What is happening in Nigeria?” We get chained down because those who ought to be making the laws to unchain us are assisting in the chaining. Have they ever sat down to pass laws that would create jobs in that National Assembly? With the capacity of the youth, have they created hubs? When I was in the Philippines, they had international call centres. When it comes to foreign exchange earnings, the Philippines earns one of the highest amounts of foreign exchange through international call centres. What do we call call centres here? You put an umbrella somewhere and put Glo, MTN, and Airtel lines there. What do Filipinos do? They build a whole city that employs about two million young and educated graduates. You can book a seat in a restaurant in New York or any American city. The chances are that the person answering you is answering you from the Philippines because the service has been outsourced to them. Those airlines, restaurants, hotels, and film houses where you have to make bookings — those bookings are handled internationally from the Philippines. So, they earn money. When I was in the Philippines, I found out that the Philippines and India were two countries earning such money. I know we speak better English than the Philippines and India. I said, “Why can’t we do it?” I spoke to Olusegun Aganga, who was the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, about it. He sent a team to the Philippines to see how we could do it. Those are the kinds of things our National Assembly should be talking about: creating jobs, uplifting people, not disemploying people, and applying double standards that can create problems within society.

Q: Agitating for Sharia laws to run simultaneously with the Constitution of Nigeria, what development can it bring, or what does it portend for Nigeria?

A: When seven Northern states enacted Sharia laws, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo ignored them. He said they were practising political Sharia. They wanted to use religion as a weapon to access political power and control the political reasoning of the people. What does Sharia say about stealing? Don’t these governors and legislators steal? Why don’t they cut off their hands and legs? They are not making these laws for the safekeeping of society. They are making them to sustain themselves where they are and enable them to manipulate those under them. Marx said religion is the opium of the people. Look at what happened to Syria, a beautiful country. When Islam was introduced to the South-West, it came from the North. They came from Mali. That is why we call them “Imale”—Esin awon ara Mali. Afterwards, Christianity came, and we have been enjoying ourselves. When it is Ileya, we all go around and eat. When it is Christmas and New Year, we all celebrate because there is something peculiar to the Yorubas. That is communalism. We live together. Muslims, Christians, and Ifa worshippers live in the same house. But when people want to use religion as a political tool, they begin to ask how many teachers are Muslims and how many are Christians. Do they ask how many are Ifa worshippers? They begin to say, “There is no Christian in that office.” We never really cared about the religious affiliations of those who occupy offices. We are developing. We are the fastest in development in this country. Before Nigeria came into existence in 1450, Williams Bascom wrote a book about urbanisation in Africa and found that 47 percent of Africa’s urbanisation was in Yorubaland. That was how civilised we were, based on our liberalism and ability to tolerate one another. Your eyes are brown, and mine are green; it doesn’t matter. You are using yours to see, and I am using mine to see. I am talking to God, another to Orunmila; you are talking to Yahweh; another person is talking to Allah. It doesn’t matter. Suddenly, some people came and, because they wanted to get what they were not entitled to, they started talking about religion and began creating problems. If Olusegun Obasanjo had not been a wise man, Nigeria would have been destroyed at that point. But what happened to Sharia that they introduced because they wanted to oust Obasanjo then, and wanted to use Sharia to control what they believed was the Northern majority? This is the only country where the population is higher in the desert than the coastal area. I call it population inversion. As you move away from the coast, the population should naturally reduce because water becomes scarce and food production reduces. I walk across to Niger; I can’t find the same population you say you have. I can’t find it in Chad or Mali, and these countries share the same climate with the North. So, in the North, we have political religion and political population. We politicise everything, whereas governance is about man—man as the unit of development. One man, irrespective of his tribe, is equal to another man. They claim they have people they don’t have because they want to take over power. They use the power to do what? I was looking at the recent Orire kidnapping. About the same day that the Orire kidnapping happened, there was a kidnapping in Maiduguri. They are still there. The people kidnapped in Orire have been released. They started cursing the media for focusing on Orire. It wasn’t because the media focused on the Orire kidnapping; it was because the people attracted attention to it as a problem. When it happens in the North, Northerners take it as a normal situation of life—that people must be kidnapped. They went to a school and kidnapped people in the South-West, and that touched the nerves of the South-West. Education is the petroleum industry of the South-West. You mess with it, and they will rise. The terrorists have been messing up the education system in the North since 2009, and they kept quiet. When Nasir El-Rufai was the governor of Kaduna State, they would go to polytechnics and universities and kidnap students and other people. They kept quiet. The Yorubas don’t keep quiet about that because they know it is wrong. The North keeps quiet because they believe it is normal. Who do you react to? You react to the person who shouts loudest about his problems, not the person who keeps quiet. It is this inability to use religion to develop the people, but rather to use religion to hold the people down, that is the problem. If there were no other developed Muslim countries, we would have thought that Islam was against development. When you get to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha in Qatar, Saudi Arabia itself, then you begin to wonder: these people are developed. So, it is some oligarchs who want to rule forever. They don’t want those under them to rise educationally because education creates equalisation. Why would I be talking on PrimeStar if I am educated? I am certainly more educated than my father, and my father was more educated than my grandfather. That has been the situation in the West. My children are more educated than me. So, we are building a hierarchy of ascending educational attainment, and you are doing otherwise, where only a few of you, the children of the privileged, will go and study abroad. You don’t like education, but you send your children to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UK, and the USA to study. You train your children. Then you tell those people not to read. It is political selfishness. Those are the things we ought to fight in this country. On the other hand, rearrange Nigeria so that if you don’t like education, feel free not to like it. If I like education, I should be free to like it. When some people now bring Sharia to the South-West, I just laugh. Very near Mapo, there has been a Sharia Court for more than 50 years. Nobody bothers about it because it only affects Muslims and those who subscribe to it. But when you want to make your religion universal and above other religions, you are going to get resistance. I have studied Sharia law. I remember Modupe Oduyoye, who wrote a lot about it. I have studied canon law, which Christians don’t impose. I looked through the books of Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers. If you read the Sharia books and those three books, they are the same. This is because those who wrote Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were living in areas with these Sharia people. Those who wrote the three books lived in Israel. They were all rearing cattle. Abraham reared cattle. They were living in the wilderness. They imposed Sharia as a rule to govern people who were not particularly civilised but were wanderers. Must we still do the same thing in this era of civilisation, when people are no longer living in the wilderness? If they used to remove one eye in the time of Moses—an eye for an eye—when they have grown, you turn the other cheek. Still the same people, but the level of development has changed over the centuries. But these people want us to ignore time and development. It doesn’t work that way.

Q: What makes white appeal to you? I have never seen you wear any other colour.

A: I didn’t start with white. I was like every Yoruba person—multicoloured. Yoruba people are colourful. They have a dress they wear at home, a dress for the farm, a dress for visiting friends, and another for attending ceremonies. That was how I was. Don’t forget that I went to university and was exposed to left-of-centre education. I loved Marxism. By 1964, I was disillusioned with Nigeria because we had three months of workers’ strikes, just four years after independence. I couldn’t imagine it. I said, “This country must change,” and I decided I was going to grow my beard as a sign of rebellion. I said that when Nigeria changed and became better, I would remove it. Unfortunately, Nigeria is getting worse and worse. In 1964, Victor Olaiya released a record, “Ilu le, ko sowo l’ode…” We never knew there was money then. It is the same thing now in 2026. I loved people like Wole Soyinka, Tunji Otegbeye, and Ayo Fasanmi. Then I got into broadcasting, and I had to wear a suit and tie. At a point, I asked myself, “Why must I wear suits?” I decided to stop wearing them. I changed my style of dressing. I started wearing Ikeja textiles, which I used to sew shirts and trousers. I had a meeting of NTA general managers with the military head of state, Olusegun Obasanjo. I wore what a colleague described as pajamas. He said they would not allow me into Dodan Barracks. Everybody wore beautiful suits, and I wore my Ikeja textile. I got there, and they were expecting Obasanjo to harass me. When Obasanjo saw me, he asked me to come closer to him and announced that I was the only Nigerian among them. He said, “Look at him; he is wearing Nigerian-made clothes. Look at all of you. You are patronising Switzerland, Italy and so on.” So, I continued doing that. For many years, I wore Ankara, Adire and other Nigerian fabrics. I had a colleague, Buba Tekoni. We met at a seminar, and for the three days, I wore white. After that, he saw me wearing other colours and said, “No, this white fits you. Don’t wear anything that is not white.” I gave away three boxes of coloured clothes. I started wearing white. Then I found out that white is very cheap to wear. I can wear a ₦5,000 white cloth and, because it is white, it stands out. The Yoruba say that when an albino gets to the market, he stands out because of his colour. When you wear white, it doesn’t matter even if you bought it for ₦500 per yard; it will stand out. But white imposes discipline on you. White attracts dirt, so you have to be disciplined. Otherwise, you wear it in the morning and, before the afternoon, it is already dirty. I don’t want to look dirty. So, it imposes a culture of cleanliness on you. When people look at me and say I must be worshipping some god because I wear white, I laugh. My father happened to be a priest of the Anglican Church. I lived in the Anglican Mission. He did that for 41 years and died in active service. So, I have no exposure to all those things, and there is nothing in Christianity that says I must wear white. I am wearing it because somebody from Gombe said, “It fits you.” I looked at it and realised that it fitted me. I then found out that it brought the cost of my dressing down. There are people who buy quality white clothes for me, but I buy the simplest ones. Because I buy the simplest ones, I have at least one for every day. So, what I did was buy very cheap ones, one for each day. I don’t wear one twice. It is part of cleanliness. It has made the cost of my wardrobe so cheap. I am so excited about it.

Q: Are you saying that you will continue to have this beard until Nigeria changes for the better?

A: Yes. I have kept it since 1964. I keep praying every day for Nigeria to change.

Q: So, you may go to the grave with your beard?

A: One of my daughters said I would carry my beard to the grave. I replied that I hope not. I pray not. I am disillusioned with the government—not this government in particular, but a succession of governments. Unfortunately for us, it seems to me that as we move forward, we deteriorate. This means we are not growing and improving. It hurts. I see Nigerians themselves—it may not be all of them—but I see growth in intellect, imagination, creativity, and innovation. I said to myself, if Nigerian mechanics are empowered, they will make Keke NAPEP, otherwise called Keke Marwa and there won’t be any reason to important the keke from India. Our people are so creative. I had a Mazda, and they said the engine was not good. They put a Toyota engine in it. Unlettered mechanics did it. I remember they once put a Peugeot engine in an Igala car. That is who we are—so creative. If our government is not creative, I am happy that our people are creative. This is why I hope that one day, what I call the “sheer force of nature” will compel us to move forward. When those boys started the #EndSARS protest, we saw a new brand of protest in Nigeria. Nobody knew before then that we could protest and, at the same time, have a party, eat suya, and so on. I believe the government invaded and disrupted the protest. The government saw that the protesters could continue for months, grow in strength, and become an embarrassment to it. So, they invaded them. Those who invaded the protesters started destroying things, and the government used that as an excuse to clamp down on them. The time is coming when young people will eventually take over the government and turn things around.

Q: When you look back at your childhood, what experience has shaped the man we all know now?

A: I have told you that I was born into the home of an Anglican priest. We woke up in the morning to pray. I never liked it. I would pretend to be praying, but I had actually sleptp. My mother would pour water on me. After that, I would be ordered to ring the bell because we had to go for early morning prayer in the church. I saw discipline. I remember one day in 1957, my father called me and said, “I want you to become a principal and a reverend gentleman.” The reason was that the fashionable thing at that time was for principals to also be reverends. I told him I didn’t want to be a reverend. He was surprised and asked if I wanted to be like the children of Eli. I said no, but I didn’t want to be a reverend. He asked me what I wanted to be. I was in the middle of Ekiti, and my exposure was next to nothing. I said I wanted to be renowned. He asked, “In what?” I said, “I don’t know. I just want to be known for whatever I do.” He said, “Kneel,” and placed his two hands on me. He prayed, “Father, you have heard your son. Let him choose right, but let him be known.” That affected my life. Wherever I was, I always remembered that my father prayed for me—not that I should be a bad person, but that I should be good so that I would be known. I was sent to an Anglican secondary school, a very good one. All of that affected me. I became exposed to what I call the left of centre. Then I looked at the Bible from a left-of-centre perspective and found out that Jesus was the greatest humanist, the greatest welfarist, and the greatest Marxist we have ever had. Jesus said that if you have two coats, you should give one out. If you have two wardrobes filled with clothes and the people next to you have nothing, and you are a Christian, you are not Christ-like.

He said, “These people have been following me for days; they must be hungry.” Has it ever occurred to my governor, my president, or my local government chairman that people have been following them and they are hungry? Jesus started looking for a way to feed them, and the disciples said that even if they found the money, they couldn’t find the food. Jesus provided food miraculously. Have we ever had a leader who thinks of such humanity? “These people have been following me. They have been voting for me. They have been supporting me, and they are hungry. How do I find them jobs?” Do they think like that? Do they say, “Okay, if I must find them food, I must find them a job. If I must find them a job, I must find them a place to sleep. I must find them the ability to have clothes to wear. I must find them the capacity to train their children.” Do we have leadership that thinks like that? That affects me. When I see a young person suffering, I remember: if Jesus sees this child, will He leave him alone? Then, whatever I have, I will share. Sometimes, what we share is an opportunity for education. I will ask a young person, “Which school can you go to?” I will tell him, “Talk to your father. If he can pay half of the school fees, I will pay the remaining half.” It is not necessarily convenient for me, but I look at it this way: Jesus said, if you have two coats, give one. That changed a lot of my orientation. That is why making money and accumulating property don’t sit well with me. What sits well with me is how many people we can train and how many we can educate. I met a child who had been sent out of school, and I didn’t have the money to give him. I would look at my friends and say, “You look better than me.” They know me. They will do it, and I will go and give the money to the child. I have seen some of those children become professors, and I say, “Thank you, God.” Maybe seeing Jesus from a Marxist point of view affected me. It makes religion meaningful to me. When I met one of my political leaders, Uncle Bola Ige, he taught me something small but important. We wanted to contest an election, and he was going to have about three people opposing him from different political parties. Like a typical journalist, I did an in-depth analysis of those opponents, and I found out that one of them had no right to be in politics. He had been jailed in several places outside Nigeria, but nobody knew. I got the documents and went to Bola Ige. I said, “Uncle.” He said, “Yes, Yemi, what is it?” I said, “I found this,” and showed him the documents. He said, “You can’t use it.” I asked, “Why?” He said, “The man was created in the image of God, and you don’t run the image of God down because you will be running the image of God down yourself.” I sat down. I gave him all the documents. He turned around and put them in the shredder. I learnt that from him. Since then, I don’t run any human being down. No matter what, I will look for a way I can change that person. If I can’t, I will ask myself: is there somebody I know who has leverage or influence over him and can change him? Those are the things that have influenced my life.